


like summer with sweet hours

by oriflamme



Series: robots. robots everywhere [31]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, An Ominous Feral Idea, And Then Starscream Got An Idea, Domestic Fluff, M/M, The Transformers: Till All Are One (IDW), Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25343299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oriflamme/pseuds/oriflamme
Summary: Sometimes, Starscream makes ominous proclamations in the morning on purpose.Wheeljack's sure of it.
Relationships: Starscream/Wheeljack (Transformers)
Series: robots. robots everywhere [31]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/438580
Comments: 10
Kudos: 107





	like summer with sweet hours

**Author's Note:**

> Section breaks don't matter kids it's rambling fluff time.

"I am starting," Starscream says, with the relish of a mech who wants to unleash chaos, "a club, Wheeljack."

-

Sometimes, Starscream makes ominous proclamations in the morning on purpose.

Wheeljack's sure of it. Sometimes he even gets a kick out of it. Particularly when Windvoice visits and is ready to throw down over her carefully steeped tea if Starscream so much as glances at her sideways.

The second of her two hundred-year terms as Speaker is winding down on a quiet note, and despite Starscream having stepped out of politics six decades ago, the two of them keep bickering about it. If Windvoice _did_ run for office again, three-fourths of the planet would re-elect her in a sparkbeat, and it's driving Starscream up a wall that she won't take advantage of that fact.

"Capping yourself at two terms," Starscream reiterates, for the fiftieth time, "is _stupid_."

Windvoice rolls her eyes at him extravagantly, because this _is_ the fiftieth time they've heard it. "I think it sets a healthy precedent. One of these days I'm going to ask Vector to download a copy of her optimized democracy algorithms on a data drive so you can -"

Starscream hisses like a kettle, snapping his thumb and forefinger together, and takes a furious sip of his energon.

Starscream's not a fan of change when he's not the one in charge. Makes him antsy. Somewhere along the way, Windvoice became a close second. The day she quits, he might actually admit she did _a not-bad job_ out loud, in public, where people can actually hear him. It's why Wheeljack cuts him some slack, even though the most likely candidates for the next election cycle are Ironhide and Lightbright and both of them would do just fine.

(Ironhide is an old friend, and steady, but Lightbright has the power of pep, sincerity, and Metroplex on her side. It's a tough call.)

-

But yeah. Anyway. Woe betide anyone who thinks Starscream has lost his touch. But it's been two hundred years, and Windvoice isn't here right now. It's nice outside. Sunny, but cool with the wind off the ocean. Starscream's paint is mostly white, with blocks of red and blue, and he sits at the table with the patio doors wide open, wings flared to catch the breeze. Posing on purpose.

Wheeljack just scrolls through the physics feed and says, mildly, "Eat your oatmeal before you go do that, alright?"

Oatmeal is one of those loanwords from Earth that happened pretty much because Verity took one look at it while Wheeljack was developing it in the lab and said, "You're eating oatmeal?" It stuck. She was also the one who suggested sprinkling "the fruit gushers" on top, but thankfully energon jellies already had a name that wouldn't give Starscream a horror-induced aneurysm if he ever realized.

(Texture changes help. Starscream has issues with liquid energon and fueling when stressed. But no matter how much he groans at the Earth vernacular, Starscream finishes this. He even makes it himself, muttering all the while as it stews over Wheeljack's commandeered hot plate. Now, of course, they're both eating it. Starscream's realized it's fair game if Wheeljack stays at his work bench tinkering too long for Starscream to slide a dish in front of him.)

Anyway. Weird, but by Starscream standards? Sounds harmless. Wheeljack gives Starscream a thumb's up. "You gonna go through the university? I know a lot of groups have hijacked the department feeds to send out invites and newsletters and stuff," he says, running through the mental list in his mind. The Camiens on campus have clubs for _everything_.

-

Technically, no one is sure who's responsible for the university itself. Which has made all of Windvoice's exasperated requests that _someone_ name the damn place something other than 'the university' increasingly hilarious.

Wheeljack's inclined to pin it on Repository, honestly - they're the one who marched out into the middle of an otherwise unoccupied archipelago, two day's drive from Metroplex and Censere, and declared any information, media, or documents stored there freely available and backwards compatible for software up to five million years out of date. Most of the physical data storage is vaulted underground, but all of it is accessible through downloads and feeds, with a single archival structure above ground: an open air rotunda, the immense solar panels over the covered stacks and meeting areas fanned out like broad rays.

Look. No one ever claimed Repository was subtle.

Given the source, most of the original content was literary. Then the Camiens flocked en mass, curious, and then Tempo got wind of it and an entire delegation of Musaeum academics flooded in to offer even more reference materials, and between the two the archive pivoted into being a place where people actively came to _learn_. There's none of the restrictions of the Camien Way of Flame, and none of the old Senate's content censorship, and so the university kind of exploded. A small city had to pop up to support everyone within a year.

Wheeljack's used to research institutes and laboratories. He got lucky, on the science track - most of the 'academies' back on old Cybertron were function-driven and more concerned with cramming state-approved, standardized instruction packets into people's heads. The ones who got curious or bored or wanted to learn _more_ -

Well. There's a reason the Decepticons, ex- or otherwise, on campus tend to run in furtive packs. Like skittish, heavily armed gazelles.

(The other reason is that the Musaeum mechs will debate anyone, anywhere, and after the first few times one of them tells you to square up in the courtyard to argue semantics, you learn to run. Period.)

-

Speaking of which. Wheeljack has the seminar on entry level chemistry in an hour. It's the one with both the medium-sized cohort of Decepticons _and_ two intergalactic exchange humans, so he has to get there early to bust out the good blast shields. Just in case.

("Why are you teaching a room full of Decepticons how to create explosions?" Starscream asked, with a beatific smile. "Have you _no self-preservation instinct_."

"Chemistry is fun!" Wheeljack promised. "Anyway, the _really_ explosive reactions aren't until later. Today we just tested how different metallic salts in solution produce different colored fire!"

One of the ex-Cons had murmured a tiny 'holy scrap,' under his breath, as Wheeljack set the table on fire for further engagement points. It was a hit.

"And the explosions would be minor. Totally," Wheeljack added.

Starscream didn't have an aneurysm on the spot, which was reassuring. But now one of the jets keeps tackling Wheeljack out of the way whenever he gets a little over-enthusiastic with demonstrations, and Wheeljack gets the feeling that word about Starscream did the rounds. He'd tried to run a nice, straightforward physics 101 class, too. But they'd gotten off track around the half hour mark when he'd video-called Perceptor with a question, and by the time Wheeljack was finished it had, uh. Not been 101 anymore.)

So Wheeljack finishes his oatmeal - yeah, they're both eating it now - and starts stacking his datapads.

"It will involve sharp objects," Starscream announces. He folds one leg over the other with a dramatic kick, and pops an energon treat into his mouth. His smirk is full of deep, prickly satisfaction.

"Okay, maybe I won't let you borrow the science department feed access, then," Wheeljack concedes, mildly. He stands up, stack in one hand and mug in the other, and goes to dump it in the machine. "But if you need me to vet flier designs, I'm still game."

It's important to think positive and be supportive.

Also, Starscream's totally doing this on purpose to bait a reaction. People probably aren't going to get stabbed.

Probably.

And see, here's the thing. The thing that Orion trips up on, every time Wheeljack tries and fails to explain it. This is _fun_. Starscream swivels dramatically in his chair to keep poking Wheeljack's knee with his foot, trying to get a response. If Wheeljack had a mouth, it would be a real struggle to keep a straight face right now. If he makes eye contact, he _really_ won't be able to help it.

-

Starscream doesn't always know what to do about affection that doesn't have an ulterior motive attached. It kind of hurts to see, every time. But he's getting there. One time Wheeljack looks at him and smiled, the corners of his eyes scrunched up helplessly, and Starscream had taken one look back and turned an entirely different shade of grey, mortified. He reached out and covered Wheeljack's optics with his hands while Wheeljack ducked away, chuckling. "You - stop that," he'd protested. "You - are _so_ \- what is that look for?!"

Pit, Wheeljack can't even remember what that look _was_ for, now. He smiled, something soft and unbearable warm in his chest, while Starscream kept trying to physically smooth the eye scrunches out.

Wheeljack tries to be practical. Maybe that's part of his own issues, though. He's used to being kinda midgrade for people. Solid, but not really a big deal or long term in any sense. He considers a lot of people his friends - and yet when it came down to it he wasn't really anyone's _best_ friend. People would look for him, don't get him wrong, but by the time the war was done Wheeljack had kind of contented himself with being as good as he could be. Now -

(- he has Prowl sending him absurdly long messages about weird moon rocks on a quarterly basis, and Windvoice in an open comm line specifically reserved for cross-city gossip, and Jetfire collaborating on new experiments for their respective seminar groups to try out, and Jazz, who shows up in their living room on a weekly basis to talk over mixed drinks and de-stress while Jazz picks away at his electro-bass, because of all Wheeljack's oldest friends Jazz is the one who _gets_ it -)

\- he and Starscream have been living together for going on 200 years. Life doesn't have that precarious tilt anymore: like it might go awry at any moment, like the war is just on pause, like any second now a random fleet of warships might appear in the sky and Neo-Cybertron will have another catastrophe.

So Wheeljack soaks it in.

-

The closest call they've had in a while is, ironically, when Wheeljack wants to move to the university.

He _wants_ it.

He's happy to help out, always has been. But being the de-facto lead government scientist guy on call whenever there's problems was something he did because there was a need. Starscream had needed him, and then Windvoice, and at the rate things around Metroplex tended to break down it was important to have _someone_ on top of it. Particularly once Shockwave turned back up.

But the university is shaping up to be something new and fascinating and _fun_ , and even Nautica's threatening to make Rodimus turn their ship around so she could come check it out. It's a perfect storm of creative people from so many different fields coming together in one place and people who wanted to learn having absolutely no reason _not_ to, and Wheeljack sort of wants to take one of those Camien courses on subglyph linguistics, and –

Wheeljack realizes abruptly that Starscream won't go. Won't go, won't want to go - whichever comes first. All Starscream's work is here in Metroplex, as Windvoice's totally-not-evil right hand mech. This is what he _thrives_ on. The university is two days away, off the northern coast, no matter how you slice it.

This unfortunately doesn't register in Wheeljack's head until somewhere around the forty-five minute mark of his enthusiastic, unabashed rambling. Get him started about something like this, and he kind of goes off, and Starscream's been listening the entire time.

He hasn't said much at all.

They'd started out with Wheeljack's feet kicked up on the couch while he leaned against Starscream's side, Starscream's arm looped around his waist. At some point Wheeljack had pulled away and leaned over cross-legged, three different holo screens projecting over the table as he scrolls through the facility schematics and schedule. Gingerly, he uncrunches his back and sits up, glancing at Starscream to get a read on him.

Starscream's just looking back at him. Contrary to popular belief, Wheeljack can't read Starscream like a book. He just likes observing things. Starscream's eyes are narrowed, but it's not a frown.

Sometimes Starscream looks at Wheeljack like he doesn't know what to do about him. This isn't that. More like he knows, and has known for a while.

Caught staring, Starscream flips his gaze away with a huff. "You're going there to stay," he says, dismissing his own long-forgotten datapad with a wave.

Wheeljack still hesitates, unsure where this is going to go. He definitely talked his way into this one. But – yeah. "Yeah," he says, bracing internally. "It's not that far, flying?" he adds. He winces and cuts off the rest before he can stumble any harder. Because he's caught _himself_ off guard. Feels like falling. Maybe only a step or two, but that's enough to twist something out of joint, sometimes.

(He really doesn't want to lose this. He can't remember the last time someone touched him and it wasn't friendly, light, and casual. The last time he had someone who _really_ wanted him back. Who wanted to keep hold of him.)

Starscream's hand stops mid-wave.

Then he stands up, gliding around the back of the couch before Wheeljack can react. Wheeljack recognizes Starscream's own defensiveness in the stiff way his wings angle down. "You say that," Starscream says, too lightly, "as though I'm not _obviously_ coming with you."

Wheeljack whips around in his seat, raising a hand before he hits the back of the couch and gets stopped. "Really?" he asks, and it comes out with that sharp, yearning, hopeful twist.

Starscream softens half a pace from the door. He turns and steps back in range of Wheeljack's reaching hand with a scoff. "Obviously," he repeats, as Wheeljack catches his wrist. Then he stoops and kisses Wheeljack's forehead briskly, off-center enough that Wheeljack blinks an optic.

Then Starscream pivots on a heel and strides right out the door, and – apparently – spends the next night and day ferrying all of his paperwork and datapads onto Windvoice's desk in a final act of treasonous vengeance.

Yeah, as far as Wheeljack can tell, it's entirely spontaneous. Windvoice calls them _both_ into her office to explain themselves, which is…fair enough. Wheeljack is still bemused, floating on a happy wavelength that means people keep catching him humming while he packs up his lab spaces scattered around Metroplex. Starscream's already there when Wheeljack arrives. Jazz leans against one of the corners of Windvoice's desk, his visor glinting with amusement. A small avalanche of datapads has mysteriously made its way onto the floor on the other side of the desk.

(He was the first person to catch Wheeljack humming.)

"That's just rude," Starscream complains just to complain, inspecting his clawtips as Wheeljack comes and sits next to him in the hot seat.

"I'm going to lose both my lieutenant and our best scientist at the same time," Windvoice says, dryly. Wheeljack's audial fins burn sheepishly at the compliment. Her smile is rueful but real, and her eyes are a pale, starry blue. "Don't worry. You'll always be my favorite semi-traitorous lieutenant."

Starscream preens. "Where _will_ you be without us," he sighs, flicking a claw at Jazz to mentally dismiss him.

Jazz just brightens his visor, and grins with teeth.

"I get Transmutate in the divorce. I think we'll be fine," Windvoice deadpans. Then she rolls her eyes and starts pouring out the celebratory Camien engex for herself and Wheeljack while Starscream's still recovering from the emotional blow.

-

Wheeljack expected Starscream to miss it, and he does. One of his favorite pastimes is reading aloud one of Windvoice's own policy decisions to her on speaker with deep, spark-felt grievances tagged in red.

He expected – more than a little pensive, still braced on the inside – that Starscream might even regret it. For someone like Starscream, who's spent most of his life existing in and around politics, pushing and playing for power with the same urgency of a human breathing, what would fill in the sudden gaps in his time, once the move was done, the apartment arranged to his satisfaction, and Transmutate stopped calling every day in a frenetic whirlwind of questions. Flying out over the archipelago, sometimes with Wheeljack driving and sometimes alone, could only fill so much time.

Wheeljack had _worried,_ until Jetfire came to beg Wheeljack for mercy. Which was how Wheeljack learned that Starscream was taking every science and engineering seminar _not_ taught by Wheeljack with an absolutely furious intensity.

"What field are you interested in, though?" Wheeljack asked, helplessly, trying not to laugh because that would be a _disaster_.

"All of it!" Starscream fired back. The 'furious intensity' thing was entirely literal. He flared his wings like he's daring Wheeljack to challenge him on it, for some reason.

"But not _mine?_ " Wheeljack protested. Which is the _real_ question here.

And also, inexplicably, exactly what was needed to defuse Starscream's mood. "Don't make it _weird,_ Wheeljack," he said, primly, and went right back to haunting Jetfire's every waking hour in a grimly determined bid to get the credits for unsupervised lab time.

The day Starscream gets unfettered access to the physics lab is gonna be a fun one. Wheeljack intends to bring enough rustcorn for an audience. Shockwave in all of his violent, lime-green and teal glory attempted to pre-invite himself, and Wheeljack still isn't sure how he even got wind of it. Verity already claimed a ticket for herself and Springer.

(The second century hasn't been as hard on her as the first.

By the time anyone recognized what was going on – the way Verity simply stopped aging in her early twenties, and never got back in the habit – Mesothulas had worked his way into a Titan's good graces far, far away, on the other side of a very selective space bridge. Undoing it would risk too much, with no one of Mesothulas's caliber on hand other than Botanica.

Verity didn't stick around long enough for them to even try. "Places to be, people to see," she'd said, blasé, and turned up thirty years later at the Jupiter station, hitchhiking her way back to Ultra Magnus.)

-

Anyway. Hobbies are good! Knowing Starscream, there's already a club for whatever he's doing, and he wants to prove a point.

"I'm inviting Thundercracker and Skywarp to help," Starscream finishes, stretching his laced fingers overhead with one final, triumphant flourish.

Thundercracker and Skywarp have been back on planet - humans and dogs dying so fast doesn't sit well, once you started liking them - and the world didn't end then, either. Wheeljack got the impression that Thundercracker may or may not be on the run from certain Earth authorities who finally realized a Cybertronian with a lifespan of approximately a bajillion years broke their copyright laws beyond saving, though. Starscream treats them with an entirely mutual awkwardness, since they're both on campus too, and it's only ended in a fight with a curly straw shoved up someone's nasal vents _once_.

Then Starscream pulls a narrow sword out of a subspace compartment. The light in his eyes is pure, unadulterated evil as he grins at Wheeljack. "We're going to do _fencing_ ," Starscream says, exultant, as Wheeljack's expression undergoes three rapid transformations in the space of a sentence.

Oh, slag. They're absolutely going to stab each other.

"Hold on. Wait a minute," Wheeljack protests.

Starscream cackles and powerwalks out the door even faster.

Wheeljack hightails it after him, wheels hitting the road before the door finishes closing behind them. "No, wait until my classes are done! I can bring face visors!"

-

What he should have brought, in hindsight, were noise cancellers. He'd forgotten Starscream could get that kind of _range_ with his victory shriek. He reclines on the couch, audial sensors muted to give his processor a break, while Starscream lays with his head in Wheeljack's lap and nurses several strained cables in his elbow.

WJ: There is definitely a Camien fencing club already.

Starscream flexes his hand, purple optics burning.

SS: Yes. I am aware. Windvoice is already betting on them.

SS: The enemy.

Wheeljack shakes his head, and then leans it back, optics off, his fingers tangled loosely with Starscream's.

**Author's Note:**

> In this house we stan neveralarch's [fencing AU](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1026729) -


End file.
